Art in the Age of Intellectual Destruction

Walter Benjamin’s “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” has been required reading for anyone attending an American art school for so long that it has become part of the canon of contemporary art theory. Is it still trenchant given where we find ourselves today, over 70 years after it’s appearance? Here is a strong critique by Jonathan Davis that puts to the test our ability to take seriously Benjamin’s most famous art text.

Davis’ critique has four points.

1. The “aura” of art that Benjamin claims has been forever lost due to mechanical reproduction is poorly defined, never threatened by copies, merely the effect of hallucinogenic drugs, or applicable strictly to a narrow category of cult objects. The reference to drugs is outside the essay and is taken from Benjamin’s other writings. Has the “aura” of art persisted despite the rise of mass market culture, or was it never there in the first place? The best point is this: the opening of the Louvre in 1793 did more to wrench art from its older traditional context than any industrial reproduction techniques.

2. Davis critiques Benjamin’s ontology of painting by proposing an alternative. Benjamin claims that an artwork’s aura is dependent on there being a unique object located in space and time. Davis’ alternative is that a painting can be one element of a type, in other words several versions of the same painting. This could easily work with editions of sculpture, but painting is the harder case and I think Davis makes the case.

3. Davis argues that Benjamin’s essay is complicit with mass produced consumer culture. This is so because Benjamin can find no appeal for aesthetic value beyond individual preference. Consumer preferences is the value of the shopping mall, a serious competitor to the art museum.

4. Davis points out that Benjamin’s political commitments led him to renounce tradition. This unfortunately leaves no alternative to the shopping mall. The serious work of fine art is better able to resist the small world of consumer preferences and to awake in us sensibilities stunted by mass culture.

These are all, in my opinion, cogent arguments and merit serious contemplation.